


the indomitable spirit of man

by SnowStormSkies



Category: Tokio Hotel
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Ankle Cuffs, Blood and Injury, Blood and Torture, Boys in Chains, Chains, Character of Faith, Community: hc_bingo, Crisis of Faith, Flogging, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Isolation, Kidnapping, Pain, Poisoning, Prayer, Psychological Torture, Religion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Solitary Confinement, Threats of Violence, Torture, Whipping, prisoner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 19:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9673649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowStormSkies/pseuds/SnowStormSkies
Summary: “There is in this world no such force as the force of a man determined to rise. The human soul cannot be chained.” W.E.B. DuBois.In this hell, in this place that is as far from safety and love and help that one can get, Tom prays. It's all he has left.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [casey270](https://archiveofourown.org/users/casey270/gifts).



> for hc_bingo, postage stamp of whipping/flogging + poisoning + betrayal + wildcard (starvation/hunger).

He never used to pray. He was never very religious, very attuned into the universe. He was never very convinced that talking to nothing would give him anything except a headache and a feeling of mild embarrassment. He always had more to do, more to see, more places to be and more to care about than his soul, than religion, than the peace and tranquility it was supposed to bring or the faith in the impossible.

But here, he prays. Maybe it’s his situation, maybe it’s the fact that he’s never come so close to death (so many times, too) than in here, but in prayer, he’s found solace.

His fingers are numb again, his palms oversensitive and swollen, but he folds his hands together, just like he remembers from so long ago. He needs a physical reminder of his body, using it as he chooses, making the folded hands of a thousand prayers a method of focusing his mind. It’s less a mediation, more an escape, but he works with what he has. Bill told him about it once - in mediation, you need something to hold it, to keep it together. Bill used a candle at home, a necklace on tour, with his locket with pictures of the people he loved inside.

In this hell, Tom folds his hands and looks on with blind eyes. There’s nothing else to do. His focus comes from within, because there’s no light down here to show him the walls or the floor or the chains that bind him or the bucket in the corner. There’s no light in here until _they_ turn it on, upstairs. In all honesty, he’d rather not look. The darkness is forgiving, much easier to cope with than the visual reminder that he’s in a box, a box under the ground and chained the wall with heavy manacles that someone made for a prisoner like just him.

But not him. As others have come and gone, he is just one more.

He breathes deep. The air in the cell is thick, damp, foul, and he can taste blood and filth. His back has gone beyond the initial stages of burning, of feeling like knives in flesh. Every stroke of the lash - _now, it’s not a whip, my boy. Whips are for horses and cattle and useful things. This is a lash for prisoners and slaves -_ cut clean and left deep furrows in his skin. Now, it just hurts. A mindless, neverending pain that crawls around his bones and into his brain.

He feels old. In this place, in his own personal hell, he hurts and aches, and it never goes away. His bones hurt from sleeping on the hard concrete floor. His face is rough and beard burned from the razor that the _son_ scrapes his flesh with once a week. His hair is knotted and pulls at him. His joints protrude. He looks like Bill did at the height of his own raging demons, angles and sadness and pain etched into him from within.  His fingers are twig-like, bent and broken, and his lips and mouth and throat still burn from the tainted food _she_ fed him. He still can’t get rid of the taste of metal and false sweetness.

He doesn’t trust anything they give him now. He eats only what he knows he can trust - plain bread, water in a bottle that they throw into the room sporadically. A diet a far cry from his old one. He craves vegetables, fruit, the sweetness of an apple, the richness of fish, the indescribable taste of home from a cookie his _wife_ makes.

He’s forgotten her face, her name only comes to him after so long, but her food, the thing his body would kill (or die) for now, that hasn’t gone away.

His skin is burned and cut and blistered and scraped and bruised and battered from what they do to him. He is never allowed to heal, never allowed to sleep, only allowed to hurt and scream and pray. Until _they_ are done with him, his body is not his, and he’s never quite understood this concept, always found it so hard to understand until now. His hurt belongs to him - he owns it, even if someone else put it there - but his body is not, and **none** of this is prayer, and it’s not helping.

Exhale, count to ten. Inhale, count to ten. Exhale…. Inhale…

He reaches past the pain, searching past the part of his brain that’s screaming for help and for sleep and for food, delves deep inside himself to the place that he only learnt about in this cell. It’s not a mind palace, or a brain space in his mind; it’s not even a mind anything. He can’t hide in his head anymore - it’s full of _their_ words, _their_ promises of pain and hurt and terror, _their_ laughter as they hurt him, and it’s not his anymore. They took that away, oh, so many months ago. No, his safe space is deep in his chest, behind the **sternum** , the protection of the heart. He envisions it like a sanctuary, a cathedral of bone and hallowed hall of life. The altar of his heart is inside, the place he envisions to pray at. This is the strongest place in the body, a shelter for life and the only place he has in this cell that isn’t hell.

It’s broken and bent, through war and hell and pain, but it’s his.

Tom breathes out again. He’s lost track of sleep - he doesn’t know how to anymore, because he passes out rather than makes the choice to relinquish consciousness, but this is as close as he thinks he can come willingly. He understands the meaning of _serenity in the face of adversity_ when it comes to prayer.

At least, that’s what he thinks he does. Nobody ever explained to him exactly what it means to pray. He wishes he paid more attention at school, or to Gustav, a Catholic, to his mother, a woman who believes in karma and spirits and gods without number. In this place, any god would be a welcome help. Nobody ever taught him if prayer was supposed to be a conversation with the man upstairs or a request for help, a demand, or even how to go about it, but he’s found his own way. He never believed before this; he never believed in bending the knee or offering up promises, but then again, he never needed them like he needs them now. The only person listening to this could be God.

 _“Our Father,”_ he begins, “ _who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”_ His voice is rusty, dry, his lips blistered, but he continues. Nothing will stop this. “ _Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”._  He’s said it so much that they’re not so much words anymore, just sounds that blend together into a familiar rhythm. _“Give us this day our daily bread.”_  He doesn’t have to think, it just flows. “... _and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”_ Forgiveness used to be fleeting, now it’s a challenge. He’s said that line so many many times in this place, first on his knees, then on his back, chained to the chair, then between gasps of air after they tried to drown him like the dog they claimed he was, because he could not forgive what they had done but he prays and hopes that saying it will change him. But through it all, the words never differed, never gave in, “ _And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”_ That’s the line that he’s had so long to come to terms with. Deliver him from evil, from the devil upstairs, from the hate and the pain and the hell that is this place.

_“For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”_

Five-year-old Tom learnt this in school and at grandma’s church and all the way up through school, through everything until they made it big. It was the way he and Bill and the rest of his class started every morning at school. When he made it big, when _the band_ made it big, he left it behind, the trappings of small town life and rural Germany that he’d been desperate to shed since he was old enough to know what could be out there. For ten years, he forgot it. For ten years, he didn’t say it. For ten years he let it gather dust in his mind, but in this  place, it came back.

After all the songs he learnt, the speeches, the music, the paperwork, the maps and pleasure and names and faces and the hours and hours spent waiting and watching and playing for crowds and kisses he gave freely and beds he shared and women he never loved (and the ones he did), these words are _his. “Our Father, who art in heaven…”_

He will do this for as long as he can sustain it. He doesn’t know how long he can go on but he knows he can’t give in to them. The concrete wall at his back is wet and damp. In the corner, he can hear the constant sound of running water, escaping from the room above him. His hearing, sharper than ever, won’t let him escape these sounds, but he’s been there so long, so many days and hours and minutes that they’ve become familiar. They’ve become his world. _“Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.”_

As have the footsteps above him.

He breathes deeply. Inside his cathedral of bone and blood, he remains calm, even as his heart begins to race and his body wants to get up, wants to fight and run, and leave. Metal scrapes against metal, and he can hear music start up somewhere in the room upstairs. _They’re_ coming for him.  “ _And forgive us….forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…”_

Prayer does not make a man strong. It cannot make him something he is not, and Tom knows he’s broken, shattered, and bent and bled for days and days and days now. He is not strong. Prayer hasn’t changed that. “ _For thine is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory…”_

It makes him _resilient._

**Author's Note:**

> As always, casey270 betaed. So much thanks for that. :)


End file.
